Note 5 — Chapter VIII · [CONTINUATION OF STERN’S COMPOSITION.]

“For we have in this country fields for many, though the inhabitants are few. And it is not the rain which fails, for the summits of the mountains suck the clouds of heaven to the earth. And not everywhere are rocks that refuse a place to the root; for in many places the ground is soft and fertile, and calls for the grain, which it is willing to return you in a bended blade. And there is no war in the country, whereby the paddy is trodden down while yet green, nor is there sickness to paralyse the patjol.5 Neither are the sunbeams more powerful than is necessary to ripen the grain, that has to be food for you and your children; nor banjers,6 that make you say, ‘Show me the place where I have sown.’